


my storms have a name

by ftera



Category: Borderlands (Video Games), Tales from the Borderlands - Fandom
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-11
Updated: 2018-01-11
Packaged: 2019-03-03 06:07:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 998
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13335057
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ftera/pseuds/ftera
Summary: They don't hate each other, despite the rough touches and the cold front they put up towards each other. This is a fact, a certainty, that they can both agree to.It's not hate but it's not exactlyloveeither.





	my storms have a name

**Author's Note:**

> me at me: you hate writing poetic shit
> 
> also me: it's what they deserve

“Do you think we could run away if we tried?” he asks once. (His voice is a whisper, a plea in the darkness. He tries not to think about the things Jack has done, the things that other people want to kill him for. It's stupid, it's reckless, it's suicidal, but Rhys wants him _safe_.

Maybe if he was younger and more naive or older and wiser he would know what this was. Some days he is afraid he doesn’t even know his own name— much less of the feelings that plague his mind.)

It is his first mistake.

 

* * *

 

It starts out like this—

there are hands are in his hair and a mouth traces along his skin, creating patterns between splashes of ink and scattered moles and the touches recreate him, decorating him in new ways. There is nothing slow about it, these passes of lips and flashes of teeth. It almost always hurts, and the first time there is blood that pools behind their teeth when someone bites down too hard.

The ache is good though, afterwards, when he hides beneath his clothes again and knows that there are finger shaped bruises pressed into his hips.

He knows it’s dangerous to be with someone like him, all sharp edges and cruel intentions and demanding orders, but Rhys isn’t known for being an idiot for nothing, so he keeps coming back.

That’s how it starts out, and then— 

the hands begin to linger. They are no less greedy and sometimes they are even less rough, but they now brush through his hair, along his cheek, spreading warm and solid against his neck. Rhys would never admit to being touch deprived, but he _is_ , and he revels in this. There are some nights even where hands will swipe over every inch of his skin and more still where the touch of a gentle mouth will follow after the same pattern. It makes him weak, makes him long to be held.

Rhys will not call it love, because he does not love him and Jack _certainly_ doesn’t love him either.

(In the beginning, before they had been anything, Rhys had jokingly called Jack a robot but that was before the mask was taken off— figuratively, literally— and Rhys got a look at the way naked emotion could cross over his face. In the end it didn't matter; Jack still had the emotional range of a teaspoon— calm _angerpassionlust_ calm— but Rhys knows how to read it now.)

Occasionally, Rhys is almost nearly fooled into thinking it is.

 

* * *

 

Sometimes— _sometimes_ —

when they fuck it is more than bites and scratches and poorly placed aggression. Sometimes it feels as though everything they do is so fucking _beautiful_ that Rhys cannot bear to think of it as something tinged with hate and anger and resentment. It is a supernova that expands between the two of them, and Rhy is never afraid of it even though he knows that someday that supernova will explode and it will leave them in pieces that may never let them pull themselves back together.

(Rhys wonders if there even _is_ anything that could break apart the seemingly infallible Handsome Jack, and then he wonders at himself when he started hoping it would never happen.)

It is almost too easy to get caught up in the feeling, with their still sweaty limbs tangled together, Jack’s body cradled between his legs. He finds himself softer, more pliant, even a bit sweeter, coming down from the high.

“Do you think things could’ve been different for us?” he finds himself asking one night. Rhys's neck is going to be a brutal canvas for the next few days, adorned with markings of _bittersuppressedlove_ , and Jack's back will probably be irritated by the lines Rhys’s nails had created, but Rhys finds himself relaxing into the bed, completely at ease.

Jack doesn’t laugh as much as huff out a loud breath, his teeth tugging once at Rhys’s ear before he pulls away. “No,” he says, sharp and dismissive, and Rhys doesn’t question it, not really, except— except he _can_ see it, a million different choices that could’ve affected everything.

What if Rhys had never left to join Hyperion, or if Jack had never decided to hunt for vaults? What if Jack had failed in trying to become _more_?

What if, what if, _what if_?

“Stop thinking about it,” Jack breathes into his ear, and Rhys sinks further into his embrace.

 

* * *

  
It starts out like this—

They hate each other. They hate each other so much it has become a raging storm that others dive out of the way to avoid. It is sharp words and even sharper reminders that neither of them are as bold or powerful as they think they are.

It is something words cannot convey but the blood that stains their hands has a role in, though that doesn’t answer the question of whose blood it was in the first place.

They are tsunamis and earthquakes and tornadoes, unfathomable forces of nature that only get worse the longer they last, that only cause more destruction and havoc the closer they are together. They are black holes and asteroid belts, because that’s what causes damage and that is all they leave behind, no matter the circumstances.

That’s how it starts out, and then—

They hate each other. They may hate each other until the end of their pitiful days left together, but it isn’t all that bad. It isn’t always cruel and malicious, but that’s the gift of every encounter that they have, the bruises and broken skin.

They will never be tender because they were either never shown it or because they have buried it so deep within themselves that they have no desire to set it free again, no matter how many almost smiles and careful touches they give each other.

Rhys will not call it love because it simply _isn’t_.

Sometimes, he thinks (dangerously) it gets pretty damn close.

 


End file.
